


Things Fall Apart

by orphan_account



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Illness, M/M, Sacrifice, and xenopolycythemia angst at the same time, sorry but, warp core angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-11
Updated: 2014-01-11
Packaged: 2018-01-08 08:55:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1130674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim Kirk gets to watch his world fall apart two times; once when he thought his entire crew was crashing to their deaths, and once when the person he loved was slowly dying in front of him. But Jim Kirk was a fighter, and a lover, and he would do anything he could to fix it all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things Fall Apart

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Chinua Achebe's book.

Scotty says the warp core is out of alignment, the ship is falling, sending them all to their deaths. Spock. Uhura. Bones. Ensign Ross. Lieutenant Michaels. Nurse Roberts. All the lives that were Jim’s responsibility. He failed; Khan defeated him in the end.

 

_Bones says it’s terminal. He says it’s in his blood, xeno-polycythemia he calls it. Jim’s world is collapsing; Bones is going to be taken from him. Bones who had always been Jim’s center, Jim’s steady ground, the most important thing in his life. Jim Kirk was haunted, and he hated it, he hated how it killed the people he loved._

He wasn’t going to let his ship fall. He would fix it, but no more sacrifices. Only Jim, who has no other choice. He’s gotta fix this. He’ll try to his very last breath to fix his wrongdoings; he doesn’t care what happens to him.

 

_“Bones please.” Jim pleads, feeling the sting of tears in his eyes “You’ve gotta fix this. You’re a doctor, I know you can. You’ve fixed me so many times, and I’m the most broken person in the world. If you can do that, you can do anything.” “It’s too late Jim, it’s unavoidable.”_

The ship is crashing, crashing fast. Jim knocks Scotty out and heads towards the warp core. He opens the glass door and feels the hard metal against his sore knees as he crawls to the center. The ship, their ship, shutters and lurches beneath him. Falling rapidly towards earth.

 

_Bones keeps working in the med bay for as long as he can, but one day he collapses. Chapel says he has to be taken off duty. Jim can see him thinning out, as he grows paler, weaker, his body slowly deteriorates. Jim takes his hand, and feels it shake._

He can see it now, the core. Just one more push, just one more climb and he’s there. He pushes and heaves and clings until he’s at the top; staring down at the core, ready to put it back in alignment, if it’s the last thing he does.

 

_“Spock please.” He says. “Please help him. I can’t…” “Jim, I have found a planetoid whose people may have the cure. But it may be too late, even at warp speed we may not be able to bring it back in time and adjust it for Leonard’s needs”. Jim’s eyes flutter to the sleeping man in the big bed in their San Francisco apartment. “We’ve got to try Spock, I have to.”_

He kicks, he kicks hard with his black Starfleet regulation boots, but Starfleet is not his concern right now, his crew is. He strains his whole body and directs all of his energy towards the core, not yet feeling the radiation slowly killing him. He’s not important now, this is, saving his crew is.

 

_They leave immediately, Jim purges himself of all emotion, he can’t bear to feel now. Not when he’s leaving Bones, not when he may see Bones for the last time. Chapel, Uhura, Spock and Jim race across galaxies, towards Fabrini, not yet letting themselves feel the grief of McCoy’s death, not when they can still save him._

Jim sees it, he sees the core light up again, and in that moment nothing else matters. He’s heavy, impossibly so, as he is flung across the room and hits the floor painfully. But Jim Kirk is a fighter; he’s going to make it back to that door. He doesn’t quite know why. It may be that he needs to see the corridors of their ship one last time it may be that he needs someone there with him, some one that can assure him that everyone is all right. It may be that Jim Kirk’s final moments were not destined to be him lying, slack and in pain on a floor in a warp core; no he would fight to the end. It doesn’t matter for what, but he will.

 

_They have the cure. It’s in a small vial in Chapel’s med kit as they turn around and head towards earth. They have it, but it may be too late. But Jim will keep fighting; he will do anything to get his Bones back. If there was something Jim Kirk would fight for, it was him._

The last thing he sees is a pair of sad, Vulcan eyes. The last thing he imagines is the thought of Bones warm, steady hands, calming him to oblivion.

_He sits by the bedside as Spock administers the cure. He sits there for hours, his gaze locked on Bones’ face, his hands clasped in the all too still and all too cold ones of the doctor on the bed. He waits._

“Let’s call him Jim” “I dare you to do better” “I may throw up on you” “Captain on the bridge” “Dammit Jim, please wake up, please do”

 

_“Jim, it’s all right, everything is fine now.” Jim Kirk may be a fighter, but at those words he gave into the soft touch of legendary hands, the gentle pressing of plushy lips, the warm gaze of soulful brown eyes, the feeling of Bones. The feeling of belonging._

When he wakes up Bones is there, then Spock is there, then Uhura and Scotty and Carol and almost the whole crew comes to visit him. He can’t quite understand. It’s not until he’s back in their apartment, the stillness of a calm San Francisco night outside and the feeling of Bones’ warm body pressed up against him, gentle hands all over, that he truly feels alive again.


End file.
